A COUVA mother of three has been found dead, with her throat slit, at her home yesterday afternoon. She is the second woman to be murdered in the Couva district within the past two days.

Police sources told Newsday that the brother of Julie Duke Guerrero, 33, discovered her body after he went into her home at Pert Avenue, Sunset Drive, Perseverance in Couva after calling out to her and getting no response. The man later told police that on checking the house, at about 4.20 pm, he discovered his sister’s body lying on a bed. She was blindfolded, gagged and had both her hands and feet tied. Her throat was slit from one side to the other. She was clad in her nightgown.

Police sources said Guerrero, who had separated from her husband for about a year, lived in the house with her three children Felicia, seven; Jonathan, five, and two-year-old Joshua. Every morning she would walk her children out to the main road where they would be picked up by a driver to be taken to their various schools/pre-schools. She would then head to the St Jude Pre-School where she worked as a teacher. Yesterday, none of her neighbours saw her leave the house. When he got no answer to calls made to her cellular phone, Guerrero’s brother visited her house and made the gruesome discovery.

Guerrero’s father Rudolph Duke, an instructor at the NESC’s (National Energy Skills Centre) institution in Mayaro, said he got the news of his daughter’s death while he was still at work.

Struggling to maintain his composure, Duke said he does not know why anyone would want to kill his daughter, whom he described as kind, soft-spoken and wonderful woman who loved children.

An autopsy will be done today at the Forensic Science Centre in St James.

Guerrero’s murder came a day after mother of one Stacy Roopan was gunned down near her Couva home as she was walking to a nearby pre-school to pick up her son. For this year, of the 52 murders committed, nine were females. Investigations are continuing.